Nothing Halfway
Written with my Thursday group with the prompts: overmedicated, turkey, she shook her head, walk, boring little houses, ice breaker, on top of a picnic table, Monday morning, Happy Donuts, I got angry, he had a hand on her shoulder
When Mandy regained consciousness, she was already walking. Disoriented, wandering in fog—except it wasn’t fog—as her vision focused, she realized it was a warm morning, probably Monday, and the pink light of dawn was squeezing between two high rise towers looming in the distance ahead of her. She paused, twirling, wondering where she was. The street was lined with boring little houses in a row: uniform, in pale shades of beige or gray, meticulously landscaped with tiny rocks and cactus. This was not her neighborhood. Her neighborhood was a diverse mixture of Victorians, bungalows, and ugly apartments, all coated in riotous colors and amateur murals, dotted with lawn gnomes, garden saints, and bird feeders, haunted by flocks of roving turkeys, circling vultures, and the occasional coyote or two.
Mandy kept walking, flashing on a scene from the house party she crashed the night before. There were sliders and potato salad, mojitos, and dancing on top of picnic tables in the yard. Had her drink been spiked? She felt overmedicated. But maybe this stupor was the result of her switching from beer to tequila shots sometime around midnight.
Wait. She remembered now—a game of strip poker. Oh, no, what had she done? They told her it was just an ice breaker. What had she been thinking? Oh, yes, there was a man who laid his hand possessively on her shoulder. She told him no, but he only laughed. That’s when she got angry. That’s right! She had been the one to suggest the game. She was good at cards. No one could bluff the way she did.
Finally now she looked down to see she was wearing several layers of clothes on top of her own. Men’s jeans on top of her leggings, a letter jacket on top of a pull-over sweater on top of two T shirts over her own tank top. A sky blue silk scarf adorned her neck, and a man’s fine felt fedora with satin lining topped her head. Seemed she had once again won every hand.
Still groggy she began to discard bits of clothing as she walked, hoping to discover some apparel she actually liked. She shook her head and was pleasantly surprised it stayed attached to her neck.
She couldn’t believe this was happening again. There was nothing left to do but find herself a Happy Donut Shop. She was craving something greasy with jelly or chocolate cream. Because she was the kind of girl who didn’t do anything halfway.
Photo by Mukuko Studio on Unsplash
